"Every chapter of A Noble Madness is its own cabinet of curiosities."— Sukhdev Sandhu The Guardian
"An amusing and enjoyable book. Covering art, relics, natural science, books and even Don Giovanni and his quantitative approach to seduction, it is nothing if not stimulating."— James Stourton Literary Review
"As richly detailed as it is researched. . . . Delbourgo has a deft touch."— Chloë Ashby London Times
"This witty, anecdote-filled history ranges across the ages."— Martin Chilton The Independent
"Delbourgo traverses time and place to portray collectors' roles… A well-researched history of the passion to possess."— Kirkus Reviews
"Rollicking… Readers will enjoy this whip-smart history."— Publishers Weekly
"Entertaining… A wide-ranging, compulsively readable exploration of an intriguing facet of human behavior."— Sara Shreve Library Journal
"Delbourgo's book deals with a different 'dark side of collecting'… [A Noble Madness] ultimately concludes that throughout history and the world over, 'by expressing that love' for things, collectors 'are themselves.'"— Maggie Taft Booklist
"I never really understood just how intensely, wildly, hilariously, and sometimes tragically obsessive true collectors can be until I read, in breathless wonder, James Delbourgo’s magnificent A Noble Madness. This book is itself so compulsive and entertaining that I found myself wanting to collect the collectors whose lives and passions Delbourgo so brilliantly brings to life."— Stephen Fry, author of Odyssey: The Greek Myths Reimagined
"A magisterial rethinking of why we collect. I loved this book."— Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes
"What a dazzling cabinet of curiosities! James Delbourgo shows in this mesmerizing book the parallel between people’s psyches and their objects. From the high-end art collector to Jeffrey Dahmer’s horrifying temple of human bones, nothing puts the human soul on display like collecting. A Noble Madness makes a fundamental contribution to the study of human psychology."— Justin Smith-Ruiu, author of Irrationality
"An extraordinarily illuminating account of a powerful cultural impulse, James Delbourgo’s A Noble Madness ranges from ancient Rome and Ming China to Hearst’s Hollywood and Warhol’s New York; his cast of characters includes historical and fictional figures as various as Cicero and Darwin, Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. We could not ask for a better guide to this fascinating territory than Delbourgo. A Noble Madness is a delight to read and ponder, not to mention an exceptional achievement in cultural history."— Jackson Lears, author of Animal Spirits
"A tour de force of scholarship and storytelling."— Daniel Weiss, Metropolitan Museum of Art President Emeritus
"In this fascinating, witty, and provocative book, Delbourgo’s collectors range from emperors to scientists, from shopaholics to taxonomists, from bibliomaniacs to serial killers. Give it to the collector in your life, and watch the sparks fly!"— Cathy Gere, author of The Tomb of Agamemnon
"Everybody has things; some people collect things; and just a few of these people are obsessives, defining themselves through their collections. What’s been thought about people like that? Are they contemptible, pitiable, or admirable? Are they perverse or pious, crazy or charismatic? Delbourgo puts the collector right at the center of a historical story about what it means to be human. A Noble Madness enlightens, it provokes, and it delights."— Steven Shapin, author of Eating and Being and A Social History of Truth
"Is a scientist plunging into a jungle in search of specimens really all that different from someone surreptitiously snipping passersby’s hair to add to his very private collection? Delbourgo has great fun tackling this question by presenting a collection of collectors in a witty dash through the history of a deeply human urge."— Erin Thompson, author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present
"A gallery of collectors from ancient times to the present -- obsessives and dilettanti, hoarders and cataloguers, emperors, scholars and libertines. Delbourgo’s exploration of their ‘madness,’ whether uncontrolled passion, devious greed, or a desire to order chaos, is an exuberant and illuminating delight."— Jenny Uglow, author of The Lunar Men
"This is a wonderful book: witty, erudite, and deliciously written. The book has many layers, with different energies flowing and glowing across the pages, maintaining elegance and lightness of touch throughout. A rare combination of human empathy and critical insight. Delbourgo takes us round the world and deep into history to reveal both the dark and the bright side of collecting."— Hartwig Fischer, former director of the British Museum
2025-05-02
Loving things.
Historian Delbourgo examines the changing role of the collector in our cultural imagination, from ancient looter to modern-day hoarder. Motivated by a desire for wealth, knowledge, prestige, and, not least, order, collectors have amassed objects such as artworks, scientific specimens, religious relics, books, and gems. Delbourgo traverses time and place to portray collectors’ roles: In premodern China, a collector was seen as a person of superior sophistication; in Korea, collecting was a path to attaining status. Some artifacts—religious relics, for example, or African art—have been sought for their spiritual or magical power. Romantics saw collecting as an expression of one’s inner self, an idea that persists, even as collecting has been associated with colonialism, looting, and profit. Collecting, Delbourgo asserts, also has been associated with mental illness. Fictional collectors, such as Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, behave maniacally; Freud diagnosed the urge to collect as an expression of suppressed neuroses. Art collectors have been depicted variously as gloomy, gothic recluses, as figures associated with danger and unabated passion, and as libertines, while naturalists—Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Alexander von Humboldt, to name a few—are more likely celebrated for their dogged pursuit of scientific specimens. Delbourgo casts a wide net to offer biographies of collectors such as Rudolf II, a Holy Roman emperor who aspired to assemble the world in miniature; Marie Antoinette, known as the “trinket queen”; Alfred Kinsey, who collected data about sex; and female collectors, notably, Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Peggy Guggenheim, motivated by a pursuit of beauty and “nourishment of the soul.” In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association included hoarding disorder in its updated manual. As Delbourgo amply reveals, however, the distinction between the ardent collector and the pathological hoarder is hardly clear.
A well-researched history of the passion to possess.
